Entries Tagged 'Engineering' ↓

Here’s a little video I came across that The Slo-Mo Guys put together when they were invited to a GE nanotechnology lab. In this video they explore liquid physics at 2500 frames per second with two experiments. The first looks at water being dropped on a super hydrophobic material and in the second they see what happens when a magnetic liquid flows against gravity as it attracted by a magnet.

I am bringing this back this joke again because it is required. Deal with it.

A man is flying in a hot air balloon and realizes he is lost. He reduces height and spots a man down below. He lowers the balloon further and shouts: “Excuse me, can you help me? I promised my friend I would meet him half an hour ago, but I don’t know where I am.”

The man below says: “Yes. You are in a hot air balloon, hovering approximately 30 feet above this field. You are between 40 and 42 degrees N. latitude, and between 58 and 60 degrees W. longitude.”

“You must be an engineer,” says the balloonist.

“I am,” replies the man. “How did you know?”

“Well,” says the balloonist, “everything you have told me is technically correct, but I have no idea what to make of your information, and the fact is I am still lost.

“The man below says, “You must be a manager.”

“I am,” replies the balloonist, “but how did you know?”

“Well,” says the man, “you don’t know where you are, or where you are going. You have made a promise which you have no idea how to keep, and you expect me to solve your problem. The fact is you are in the exact same position you were in before we met, but now it is somehow my fault.”

Usually CNC cutters are running too fast to really see the cutting action. Ingersoll Cutting Tools has created some high-speed videos of their tools in action so you can see their cutter in action including this OctoPlus tool.

OK, so I haven’t watched the whole thing but I like what I have seen of it so far. The real interest for me though was that he mentions, at about 55:25, Pioneer had a secret turntable project that is not so secret any more and that he likes the Statonturtables. I assume that means the StatonST150s.

And the ‘not so secret’ Pioneer turntable project…in a glass cabinet. There is still nothing confirmed by Pioneer that I can see on the interwebs.

With so much of our machinery these days driven by complex electronic controls systems it’s easy to forget that engineers used to develop many novel solutions in pure mechanical systems to make machines do what was needed. Here’s a video from the 1930’s of some interesting mechanical concepts of which some look to be not entirely useful in any context.

I like making stuff. These guys are making some serious stuff. This video shows a thread rolling machine that is capable of rolling threads in stock up to 12″ in diameter. The thread they roll in this video is a 4.5″ x 1 TPI single start ACME in 1045 Cold Drawn Steel.

3D printers are all over the news now even though we have been using them in industry for years. Here is a 3D printer in a pen called 3Dsimo. I don’t really know how useful it is but it might be a fun to play with or use for artistic endeavours.

Here is a video of my ‘Useless Machine’ that I made last year. I threw together after a friend showed me another video of a useless machine.

It is based on these instructions, but I went with the simple version that did not use a 555 timer. I have used an RC servo that was hacked for continuous rotation, an ON-ON DPDT switch and a micro switch. The case is made up of a couple of small ABS jiffy boxes from the electronics store and I cut the upper one in half (poorly) to make the lids. I am only using 2 AA batteries to drive it. Total cost was under AU$20 for the purchased parts (servo, boxes, and switches) and the rest of the stuff required was scavenged from around the house/hobby box.